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Sri Lanka’s alleged abuses ‘elephant in the room’ at summit

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa on the final day of the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting, on Sunday. He refused to fully address international outcry over Sri Lanka’s rights record.Photo: Eranga Jayawardena/The Associated Press

Canada’s representative at the Commonwealth Summit in Sri Lanka said the host country’s alleged human rights abuses were the “elephant in the room” at the meeting of 53 member nations.

Parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai was sent in place of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who boycotted the meeting out of concern for the treatment of Sri Lanka’s Tamil minority detainees since the 2009 end to a decades long civil war. The prime ministers of India and Mauritius also skipped the meeting in protest. The boycott forced the issue of human rights abuses onto the summit’s unofficial agenda, Obhrai said.

He noted the meeting had fewer heads of state in attendance than in previous years, which should raise questions about member country’s commitment to the Commonwealth’s “core values”.

“We have to ask ourselves what this signals about the Commonwealth and where it leaves us with respect to the importance of this organization’s charter and promotion of its core values and principles,” he said in a post-summit conference call.

Canada is calling for an independent, verifiable investigation into claims of human rights abuses and war crimes waged during Sri Lanka’s nearly 30-year civil war. Tensions remain high between minority ethnic Tamils and the majority Sinhalese government and a UN report found war crimes allegations made against both sides, Obhrai said.

He added his fact-finding mission to the northern city of Jaffna, the site of the most brutal fighting during the war, found few reconciliation or reconstruction efforts have been made.

Furthermore, there is constant fear of persecution against minority groups. “This is a democratic country and people are afraid to talk,” Obhrai said.

He added he had been “very aggressive” in ensuring the reason for Harper’s absence at the summit was clearly communicated and that he raised the issue in official talks.

“Therefore it has now become a big elephant in the room that needs to be addressed by the Sri Lankan government.”

Yet Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa refused to do just that. Rajapaksa remained resolute that Sri Lanka’s army, which has been accused of torturing ethnic Tamil detainees, committed no human rights abuses during or after the war. He also rejected calls for an independent inquiry, saying the country’s justice system can handle complaints.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, who did attend the summit, has called on Sri Lanka to establish a war crimes inquiry before March or else face a UN probe.

Jessica is the 2013-14 Michelle Lang Fellow with Postmedia News. She's on a one-year adventure working out of Ottawa and Calgary covering national politics, news and chipping away at a special project... read more on the relationship between work and personal identity in Canada's rapidly changing economy.View author's profile